Ep 8: Did They Really End The Affair? Is It Really Over? Why Is It Important To End The Affair The Right Way? How to Cut Off The Affair Parter For Good This Time.

Brad:

An apology and a verbal commitment isn't enough.

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad Morgan Robinson. This is a podcast where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship. So if you're wanting to heal your marriage after any of these things, this is the podcast for you. And in episode eight, we're talking about how do you cut off the affair partner. So it's really important obviously, to cut off the affair partner, but one thing we want to remind you is we have free resources to help you through this process. If you go to healing broken trust.com/episode eight, that's episode the number eight, you can download our free resources there to help you through this process. So if you're in this position where you're struggling to cut off the affair partner, you might want to go back to episode four where we talk about how to fall out of love with the affair partner. That's really important. Episode two is also a really good one where we talk about limerence as well. So go back to those. Those can really help you if you are struggling to kind of cut off the affair. So that's really important. But with that, let's get started.

Today we're talking about how to end an affair. It seems clear to many of us that we can't have an affair partner in our marriage relationship in a relationship. But why is it that you can't gloss over this important step of cutting off the affair,

Brad:

Brad? Well, there's several reasons why some of 'em are quite obvious, but many times when people do have an affair, they think an apology is enough. They think that I've apologized, I've made a verbal commitment that should be good enough, and it's really not. And there's several reasons why an apology and a verbal commitment isn't enough. A verbal commitment to your spouse isn't enough. Part of that is because your spouse is terrified that this is going to happen again. I hear constantly from everybody who's been betrayed, they always say, how do I know this won't happen again? And if you don't cut this person out of your life in the right way, you're not creating safety for your marriage to go on for your marriage to heal. And so number, well, there's several different reasons why it's important to cut off the affair partner. I'm just going to go through a couple of them. I think the first is, is it sends the wrong message to your spouse and the affair partner still, he never told me it was over or she never told me it was over. So are they just busy right now or

Morgan:

Yeah, I guess I can just check up with them week.

Brad:

I'll check up with 'em later. Yeah, maybe they're just busy. We didn't talk every day anyway, so they're going to contact you again later.

Morgan:

And that's the affair partner.

Brad:

Yeah, that's the affair partner thinking that you don't send, it sends a message to your spouse. I'm not really serious about rebuilding this. I'm not really serious about building this back. And that's

Morgan:

One foot in, one foot out,

Brad:

And that's a dangerous place to be. So like I said earlier, ending the affair, it's vital to creating safety for the injured spouse, the betrayed spouse. They need to know this won't happen again. And that's a big step towards creating that safety. Also, ending the affair is vital to ending your own ambiguity about if you want to stay or not. Many people I've worked with who have been still had contact with the affair partner, whether they worked with them or didn't work with them, but had contact with them, they stayed in that period of ambiguity. We discussed where they were kind of, I don't know if I want to be here, if I want to be out. And so what happened is, is they really guilt developed and a lot of shame developed. And then they felt like, well, you don't deserve me. I'm not a good person. And that's because they've still kept this relationship up, whether the affair was going on or not, they still had some relationship with the affair partner

And they felt guilty about that and they wanted in their marriage because they felt guilty about it themselves. And so they had this overwhelming guilt, I'm not a good person. You don't deserve me, am not good enough for you. And that's the betrayer saying this. And sometimes that comes from them having an ongoing relationship with the affair partner. Maybe it's morphed into a friendship and even that is not healthy. And so that keeps them as time goes on, just feeling like I'm not good enough. I can't do this. You don't deserve me. And in that's really because in part they haven't ended the affair

Morgan:

And they're saying, you don't deserve me. You don't deserve what I'm doing to you. It's not so much you don't deserve me.

Brad:

No, it's not like that at all. Yeah. It's like it's really coming from a place of shame. I'm a bad person

Morgan:

And I've done so many bad things to you. I've

Brad:

Heard even in their spouse is saying, I forgive you. I want to be with you. It comes from that and that happens. And then the other is obviously you can't rebuild trust. I still see you with this person. I still see them emailing you stuff related to work or this or that. And some of you listening to this are just probably flabbergasted thinking, oh my gosh, this happens. Some people, they try to minimize the affair. And

Morgan:

So because rather it disappear than actually handle it or deal with it.

Brad:

Yeah, actually handle it or deal with it. And so there's things like that. There are things like that that happen that have to be clearly dealt with, and we're going to get into that in a second. But you have to cut off the affair so that you as a couple, you and your spouse can move forward in the healing process, rebuild your relationship. And here's the kicker. The involved spouse must cut off all intimate relations with the affair partner. And occasionally people work with the affair partner and they find themselves, you work with this person. So you have to. And in situations like that where you work with them, it's hard to get away. It's hard to get away. But here's one of the things too though, is if that's the situation you're in, you everything, you must not discuss anything personal with them. And you must do

Morgan:

Everything you can to get away from them if you possibly can.

Brad:

Yeah, I would recommend that everything, but you got to keep it business if that's it. And you need to let your spouse know what's going on, they're going to be asking you probably, but you need to let 'em know. And so with that, Morgan, let's get into

Morgan:

The rules for separating from the affair partner, how to do it basically.

Brad:

Yeah,

Morgan:

You want to start with the first one?

Brad:

Yeah. The first is allow the betrayed spouse to participate in the severance. And here's why that's important. Allowing the betrayed spouse to have a say in how it is done will help that person find closure as well. Also because the affair involved secrecy, this moment of truth is refreshing. It's important to remember and reinforce that couples are team.

Brad:

Here's the kicker with this though, is I have seen people, they come into my office and say, I ended the affair, but their spouse didn't participate in the severance. They have no idea.

And this person may have, and here's the thing, when you're in an affair, obviously you're lying. You're being dishonest about what's happening, what's going on, and your spouse doesn't know what to believe. And so anything that you say or do, if you say anything like, oh, I did it already, or I told her this or that or told him this or that, they don't know.

Morgan:

There's no

Brad:

Way them knowing. And the idea with this is one of the things is it creates safety. So you really need to let them participate in this. That doesn't mean that they need to write the email for you. That doesn't mean they need to do it for you. That just means if you're going to do it over the phone, you need to do it yourself. Call them over the phone and use your own words and talk to 'em. Your spouse doesn't need to say, oh, John says it's over, so quit calling him. That's not going to work. That doesn't create any safety for them, and it doesn't send the clear message to the affair partner that it's over. And so you have to do it.

Morgan:

They just might be on the other line maybe listening in or standing there, or they might say, well, you really need to tell 'em like this instead of that, because to me, this sounds more like you're cutting it off

Brad:

Versus

Morgan:

I'm doing it for the kids or whatever.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. The second one is make it a clear absolute severance. And so as, as the person who had the affair, there are plenty of ways or a number of ways to separate from the affair partner. And when you do this, you should not leave any glimmer of hope that you are still open to an affair. You have to show them, look, I'm not interested in you. I love my spouse. I want to be with my spouse. I'm doing this because I want to be there

Morgan:

And what we were doing is wrong and I will not be doing it ever again with you or anyone else.

Brad:

And so you have to have this certainty. I am certain about this, and that's expressed through tone of voice, body language and your word choice, the choice of words that you use. Do

Morgan:

Not call me ever again.

Brad:

Yeah, I am done. Do not call me again. I love my wife, I love my husband. And so it has to be with clear severance. And here's why this is so important, why you have to make this clear, why it has to come from the person who had the affair is many times as affairs grow and mature, these things can last not just months, but sometimes a couple of years, sometimes even longer than that. And people feel like they're genuinely in love with this other person. And you may be done, but that other person isn't done yet. And

Morgan:

The betrayer,

Brad:

Well, the affair partner, they're not done yet. And so you have to let them know, look, we are done. There's no us anymore. There's no future. All the things that we talked about, us leaving our spouses to be with each other, that's not going to happen anymore. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be with you. You have to get to that level, not necessarily being cruel. You want to do, be short of being cruel, but you want to be forceful. You want to let 'em know that you're certain about you being

Morgan:

Done. And that leads us to the third one. Do not be cordial or kind when severing the relationship. This should not be a friendly conversation. You don't want to be cruel, but we believe the colder and more absolute the better. In fact, it's cruel to the fair partner if there's even a glimmer of hope that this will ever happen again. So more importantly, it's crucial. Obviously, more importantly, it's crucial to the betrayed spouse, your spouse. So they're not led to believe that unfaithfulness will occur at any point in the future. So yeah, you don't want to be like, well, I don't want to hurt your feelings and I don't want you to feel bad, so good luck to you. No, I'm sorry. This is not ever happening again, right? So don't call me.

Brad:

Yeah. And yeah, it needs to be very, very black and white. I'm done to the point, you're not kind. You're not friendly when you do this. And if you have to work with a person, maybe you're professional, but you're not kind and friendly. You're not sitting around the water cooler anymore. You're not going on lunch breaks,

Morgan:

Obviously, right? You're changing habits. Changing patterns too.

Brad:

Yeah. You're not sending any mixed signals. Sometimes people when just being kind, sometimes that can be interpreted as being flirty or that you have an interest. And so you have to be really, really careful. You're not just being kind that can send the message. I'm still open to you that can send the message of being flirty, that kind of thing. I'm interested. You can't do that. Now when you end this, the fourth part of this is when you do this, you're doing it for love. It's important not to tell the affair partner. The relationship is ending. Our affair is ending for the kids

Brad:

Because of my kids or because I want them to grow up with mom and dad together or because of the commitment you made or out of duty to the family, things like that. Instead, it needs to be because you are emphasizing the love you feel for your spouse,

Morgan:

Right? So definitely it's about you and your spouse that you love your spouse, you want to reconnect with your spouse and that there's no room at all for them in any of that. It's not because they're making me or anything

Brad:

Like that. And also you could emphasize that, look, this was a complete and total mistake. Also using specific language such as Never contact me again. I do not want to talk to you, or I do not want any sort of intimate relationship with you ever again. Things like that, phrases like that. You never contact me again. I don't want to talk to you again. I don't want any sort of intimate relationship or contact,

Brad:

Things Like that. It sends a clear message that I am done

Morgan:

And repeat yourself. You have to stand your ground. Sometimes they might try to remind you of what this or that send you a text or something, got to hold your ground there and you've got to include your spouse. So if they ever did contact you again, maybe next week or next month, next year, whatever, you're completely open and honest. We've talked about that being very honest and forthright.

Brad:

And Morgan, you're right. I would say, I don't know what the exact percentages are, but I would say there is a good chance that the affair partner is going to contact you again after you try this. And it's more testing for them. This was an affair as well. This was, or a relationship as well. And maybe they loved you, and so there's a good chance that they're going to try to contact you again. If that happens, you have to let your spouse know about it. Because what will happen is your spouse is probably going to find out, and if you don't tell 'em you're going to be in deeper water and the walls are going to go up, it's going to be harder to rebuild. This going to be less trust, transparency and honesty are the best, especially with this.

Morgan:

So it's like doing the opposite of what you're doing in the secrecy of,

Brad:

Oh yeah, that's a great way to look at it. You're really doing the opposite of how you were in the affair. In the affair. You were very secretive. You were very conniving. You were very dishonest. There was no transparency. Now that you're in a rebuilding phase, you have to be transparent. You have to shine light in the darkness. You have to be honest. You have to expose these secrets that rebuilds this. Now, part of this though is this other person needs to get it. No, in certain terms, you are done. And it has to come from a place of I love my wife. I am with this person. I love my husband. I am choosing to be with him. You are a mistake. And that's where it needs to come from. And here's the other thing I want to emphasize. This is at some point there is a good chance that the affair partner is going to try to make contact. Again, be transparent, be honest. It may cause a ripple effect just because your spouse is going to feel like, gosh, this person's really obsessed with my spouse. But either way, they're probably going to find out and it's going to help rebuild trust because you're bringing that information to them. They're going to see that you're trying, that. You're being honest and transparent. And so that's really important.

Morgan:

And it's just very important to also realize sometimes the out affair partner does seek you out. Sometimes they do have a part to play in this whole affair, and

Brad:

Yeah, they do. And let me share a story. Morgan,

We had a couple by the time they came in, maybe it was about 18 months into the affair, and this was somebody who had moved out, separated, moved out back in several times when I had worked with them, they had gotten to a place where the affair was ended, the marriage was being rebuilt. They both felt like they were really moving better, and the husband worked with her, but I was able to only see her briefly, and he was able to, he had a job where he could do certain things and work out of the office. And one day he had

Morgan:

Work out of the office, office,

Brad:

Home office. He was able to work from

Morgan:

Home.

Brad:

And what I meant to say is he wasn't always in the office, so he was able to work from home. He was doing that. And one day he had to go into the office and he saw this woman and just kind of made eye contact with her, just saw her and then he's back into it again. And then they spent 18 months of trying to get to this place of ending it. And just seeing her one time caused him to

Morgan:

Flip a switch and go back,

Brad:

Flip a switch and go back. Oh, man. And we talked about Limerence before, and I'll just briefly describe it this way. Limerence is, it's kind of romantic love, but more of an addiction to a person where they're like an object and it's an obsession. And that's kind of how he felt about this woman. And he was trying to end. It did really well. The marriage was working moving forward. They were growing together. Trust was being rebuilt. He encounters this, and then they're back into that whole cat and mouse scam again, and it's really devastating. So you have to take this seriously.

Brad:

You don't know where you think you might be. Look, you think you're strong enough to do this, but you're probably not really strong. You weren't strong enough to keep an affair from happening the first time. I know right now this is an emotional place for you. There's a lot of guilt as the betrayer, but you got to really take this seriously. You can't minimize this, and you've got to be very, very careful, and you can't underestimate just where that other person's at. So you have to take this seriously that I've got to end this. I've got to have clear boundaries. I've got to know in certain terms, let them know from my heart that I want to be with my spouse because I love them and I do not want to be with you. You are a mistake.

Morgan:

And it's kind of like going back just a tad bit about limerence. It's like an addiction, very much like an alcoholic. You can't just have one beer all of a sudden that takes you back to your addiction. So it's very important to realize that some, maybe you may have to just cut it off completely depends on you. But the fifth one, right? That's what we're on.

Brad:

Yeah, go ahead, Morgan.

Morgan:

It's don't look back. So basically don't look back. It's important to make a clean break. Sympathizing with the affair partner, trying to soften the significance of the conversation or implying any possibility of a future friendship confuses the affair partner, and it will open the door to more trouble. If your spouse is involved in helping you cut this off, they're going to hear this tone of voice. They're going to hear what you're saying. They're going to hear how you're

Brad:

Saying. They're going to hear what we're telling you to do,

Morgan:

And

Brad:

So they're going to hold you to it.

Morgan:

And that's good because it's helpful. It's going to help you. It's going to help your relationship. It's going to really ultimately do what's best for you in the future. And it's natural for a previously involved spouse to want to check up on the affair partner. But it's important to resist the temptation because a lot of times these relationships, they weren't just fly by night. I mean, these are things that happen over a long period of time sometimes, and so sometimes you want to check up on that person.

Brad:

Yeah. Well, yeah, everybody's curious. You're curious about people that you dated in the past and things like that, but here's the kicker. You had an affair with this Person.

Brad:

Yeah, you had an affair with this person. This is, if you're listening to this and you're working through this, you know how this can destroy your marriage very, very quickly. You don't look back. Block this person on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, other social media. Get this person completely out of your life. It's worth it. Yeah, it's not worth it, and you don't know what it can do. That person again, but it's hurting your spouse as well. You don't know if it's going to trigger something in you where you want to go be with that person again, but it's also not helping rebuild trust for your spouse. The next principle is there should be complete openness and honesty from now on. There should be no more secrecy between the two spouses, between you and your spouse as the betrayer. You must decide to volunteer any communication that may happen between you and your affair partner before being asked to do so.

Morgan:

Oh, that's

Brad:

Key. Yeah, that's really important. That includes text messages, face-to-face interaction, emails or anything else. It is important to avoid any communication with your affair partner, but if or when communication inevitably happens, the betrayer must be quick to share it with his or her spouse. Do not underestimate how helpful this will be if you do this. This will quickly help you guys rebuild things, and so don't underestimate how helpful that can be.

Morgan:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Just being completely open and honest, man, it goes so far, so far. So yes, definitely volunteer that information before you're asked. But what about the next one? Right? We talked about maintaining a safe place, Brad, what is that? How do you maintain a safe place?

Brad:

Well, this is where the hurting spouse, the spouse, he's been betrayed, enters the process. It is very important for betrayed spouses to create an environment that encourages complete honesty. This means that when the spouse comes to them and tells them about communication with the affair partner

Brad:

It's crucial to maintain composure. So as a spouse who's been betrayed, you have to help them feel safe to talk about this because most betrayers don't want to talk about this because they feel like they already feel guilty enough and they don't want to make you hurt anymore.

Brad:

So if you are overreacting, you may be reacting, but your spouse will feel like you're overreacting. This is hurting you. I don't see the point of answering these questions. It's just making it worse. You have to help them feel safe in a sense to be able to talk to you

Morgan:

So that when or if they do get communication from a fair partner, that they know that if they're going to come to you, that you're going to not blow up. You're going to receive it with grace. You may not feel comfortable, but thanking them. Hey, thanks for being open. Thanks for being honest. I appreciate you coming and telling me this. It makes me feel a lot more secure. It makes me feel like you we're really going to make it

And you really can make it, and you really will if you are open and honest and cut that person off. And however they ended up with that story you just told about the guy who went back to work after working from home and just one look at that person kind of sent 'em back to their addiction. I mean, if he were to have just turned around, maybe even got out of there as soon as he could and went home to his wife and said, Hey, I accidentally looked at her. We were in the hallway. This happened, this happened. And your spouse can be that source of healing and can be a safe place.

Brad:

And one of the things with this is those kinds of things grow because they're secret. It just adds fuel to the fire. But one of the things to realize is this is a necessary step that has to be done. You have to cut off this person and the betrayer has to do it. It's best if the betrayed spouse is a part of this process. They're able to listen in and it's best if you say, I'm doing it out of love. You're not being kind or cordial.

Brad:

You're being short of being cruel. You're letting them know you were a mistake. I love my wife. I love my husband. I'm going to be with them. You are a mistake. I don't want to talk to you again.

Morgan:

Right? What we did was wrong

Brad:

And you're done. There's no need to reminisce about the past. Say we had good times, things like that. You're not doing yourself any favors. In fact, what you're doing is you're leaving the door open that you're open,

Morgan:

And what we're really doing here, what we need to do is we need to break the pattern of secrecy and lies. We take a giant step in the direction of healing and turn towards your spouse because they're really going to help you. And if you are the betrayed spouse, you got to help your spouse feel comfortable. It's hard, it's uncomfortable, it's painful, but it's definitely, I mean, when your spouse is coming and turning and doing the opposite and being honest with you, it's really a step in the right direction and healing will come and the pain will subside over time, you say. Yeah,

Brad:

It'll get better. Thanks for listening to Healing Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed@healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion. It's not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.

Ep 21: 10 Types of Affairs

Morgan:

If the person that you're striking up a friendship with knows more about your relationship and what's going on than your spouse does, then you're heading down that path.

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert. If you want to save your relationship after infidelity, this podcast is for you. Welcome to episode 21 where we're talking about the 10 different types of affairs. We're asking the question, are all affairs created equal? This is a really important question because not every situation is going to look exactly the same. It will help you to know and recognize the different types of affairs that are out there so you can know how to handle your unique situation better. And if you haven't already done so, go to healing broken trust.com/episode 21. That's the number 21, and download the resources that go along with this episode. Also, if you haven't yet seen the information on our one-on-one retreats and you'd like more personalized help, check out the retreatsPage@healingbrokentrust.com slash retreat today. And let's get started. You don't see specialty group private practices where the entire practice is devoted to working with couples or just one area of specialization,

And that's what we do. We specialize in relationship therapy. The average therapist out there might see three or four couples a week, but we see 50 couples every week coming through our office. On average, every therapist who works with us is committed to researching the best methods for working with couples. And research has shown that the more common method for working with couples was only about 35% successful, and only 17% of the couples actually maintained their improvement after two years.

Brad:

That's

Morgan:

Research,

Brad:

And that's a huge relapse, really,

Morgan:

Definitely one of the methods that we use emotionally focused couples therapy has also been researched, and it was discovered that 86% of couples make significant improvement in counseling. And that's the couple saying that they've made significant improvement.

Brad:

Right? Yeah. Not the therapist saying, Hey, they got better. It's the couples saying they made significant improvement, not just improvement.

Morgan:

Exactly. And then they followed those couples and they found three years after counseling, 90% of those couples actually kept their progress, which is a big deal. I mean, people usually want to know, is this going to help us? Are we going to get back to where we were again? And so that's a big difference.

Brad:

Yeah, is it's

Morgan:

Huge. It's

Brad:

A huge difference.

Morgan:

We help relationships related at any place, whether you're wanting to stop your divorce, wanting to remarry after divorce, or maybe you're just wanting to prepare for marriage or you're just having trouble connecting with each other. So we really help relationships really to any place. Today we're talking about the different types of affairs, and there are 10 different types of affairs that we've identified, right, Brad?

Brad:

Yeah. There's at least 10 different types. And these are just categories just to understand if you've gone through an affair, if you're in one of these categories, your affair is in one of these. It may not be a complete description of it, so it may be like we're going to talk about there being a one night stand, and then we're going to talk about somebody who's a burned out spouse. Maybe there's a combination of these different categories at times. So not every affair nicely fits into these categories, but we've put 'em into categories to help us understand them,

Morgan:

And that's really important.

Brad:

So there's 10 different types. I'll just briefly list off the names of these 10 different types. So there is the one night stand, there is the liran affair, there's the sex addicts affair. There is the shared interest affair, the emotional affair. There's the idealized love affair, and there's the philanders affair, the sexual abuse affair. And I'll explain that. Lemme just because that's going to throw people off. That's basically when someone's abused, taken advantage of and their spouse thinks that they were having an affair, but they were actually raped or they were sexually abused. Oh gosh. And that obviously is very complicated because the one who was abused is their spouse thinks they cheated on 'em and they were actually taken advantage of. And then there's the revenge affair, and that's when someone's been betrayed. They want to get even with their spouse and they get 'em back.

And then the exit affair, there's the one night stand and the one night stand, this very well may be a one time betrayal. It can be more than one time, and it can happen more than one time without that person being a sex addict. And so there's a fine line between a few one night stands and being a sex addict to really be diagnosed as a sex addict. You don't want to meet with a therapist that specializes in that, which is something that we can do at marriage solutions. You don't want to self-diagnose yourself with something like that. You can have more than one night stands, but commonly one night stands occur when a spouse is away from home, usually on business or a pleasure trip, something like that. And they happen in the heat of the moment. They give into temptation, and that usually happens when there's drinking and they can be anonymous.

So they're traveling business pleasure by themselves. There's drinking. They give into temptation boundaries, poor boundaries, things like that. Now, when this kind of affair happens, it's not necessarily an indication of problems in the marriage or that the betrayer is dissatisfied with her spouse. In fact, one of the distinguishing points in this type of affair is the betrayer wants to stay in their marriage. So sometimes we get people who have an affair, and one of the common elements is they're burned out. The marriage really has issues, but they really want to be a part of the marriage. This is someone who can be happily married and still does this because alcohol is involved. They're away from home, but maybe they're curious, some temptation involved.

Morgan:

You want to talk about the characteristics.

Brad:

The core of this material is really bad choices, bad boundaries, the lack of integrity mixed with the opportunity to act. Typically there's no emotional involvement. And it happens typically with a perfect stranger who's befriended in this situation. And we've worked with plenty of people with this, and this can be very hard to understand and make sense of why did this happen? As we talked about before, getting to why and understanding why it makes it more bearable, not knowing why just makes us much harder.

Morgan:

We've been able to help people recover their relationship even after this.

Brad:

Oh yeah, definitely. So this type of affair, the one night stand may be motivated out of loneliness or curiosity just generally result to poor boundaries and misguided thinking that this could never happen to me. I'm going to get close to the edge of the line, but I'm not going to cross it. Normally, individuals who have had one night stands tell themselves that they will go to the grave with this secret. I'm not telling anybody this is not an indication that they want out of the marriage. In fact, they fear that if they tell this secret, they're going to lose the marriage. And that's really the wrong approach with that. And

Morgan:

That's something that we've talked about in the past, being completely open and forthright and honest, because that really is what begins the healing process for the

Brad:

Relationship.

Morgan:

This hiding doesn't help

Brad:

But the one night stand basically. Obviously they don't want to disclose it, then the whole marriage is going to be shattered. So characteristics of this type of affair, it's really an affair of convenience or opportunity. It's not something that's really sought out, but rather it occurs as the opportunity is presented. The berio does not want to leave the marriage. That's another characteristic. And then it's not really an ongoing relationship. It happened a couple times. A relationship can develop from this. And one of the ironic things with this is when people are betrayed, especially when it's a one night stand, they say, gosh, this would be so much easier if you had a relationship with this person. I can understand it better. And then when people have been betrayed by their spouse having a long-term relationship, they're like, gosh, you just had a one night stand.

Morgan:

And everybody thinks the grass is greener on the either side.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. They think the grass is greener. And here's the important thing, if you're listening to this and you've been the one who had the affair, it's just as hard. Even if it was a one time mistake or year long mistake, it's still just as hard. There's different elements that maybe make it harder as far as pain goes. Either one's about a 10,

Morgan:

About painful.

Brad:

Yeah. And then

Morgan:

Are these typically sexual relationships? We've talked about emotional affairs we talked about.

Brad:

Yeah, they're typically sexual. Yeah. Okay. It's pretty, alcohol is involved. Yeah, it's typically just pure sex and that kind of thing. Let's go on to the liran affair.

Morgan:

So the liran affair, this type of affair is really characterized by two different or two individuals who believe they are in love and with this type betrayers believe that they have fallen in love. It's the love addiction affair that we've talked about, and they feel powerless over powerful emotions. It's not uncommon for them to feel guilty about what they're doing, but at the same time, they feel like they are no longer in love with their spouse, and they know that they will never be happy unless they're with their lovers. So it's this guilt complex we talked about where they want to go home to their spouse and they want to be there with their spouse because they feel guilty. But the whole time they're really thinking about this love object that we've described it as in the

Brad:

Past, Morgan, you hit the nail on the head. They feel guilty about having the affair, but also they're miserable at home. And so they go home to their spouse because they feel bad about having the affair. But then when they're home, they crave being with the affair partner because of that limerence catch. And we talked about limerence before, but they crave that limerence. And so then they'll go back to the fair partner. And so they bounce back and forth and it can really stretch out over a period of time.

Morgan:

Yeah. And usually it develops from an existing friendship that begins really where the boundaries have been breached. And so basically those boundaries, they weaken and then they finally give in. And I think it's really interesting, something we've talked about in the past that sometimes people in a limb and affair, they really, really try to quit it. They really try to go back to their spouse and then they go back to work or where that person may be, and all of a sudden they see them in the hallway and it's like a light switch switches, and they're like, oh my gosh. And they fall into this lime affair again. They fall

Brad:

Back to it again.

Morgan:

And it's like an addiction. I love addiction.

Brad:

Yeah. Morgan, what you were saying is important. Usually this kind of affair starts as a friendship first. It begins as the boundaries between the two individuals weaken. This type of affair is not like the one nine stand. It's not based on sex necessarily

Morgan:

The ideal of that person.

Brad:

Yeah. Well, it's the feeling of being in love.

Morgan:

Oh, yes.

Brad:

In fact, the power driving the relationship, it's really the strong emotions generated by the growing romance

Brad:

And

Brad:

It's thence. We've talked about this before. I'll just remind our audience. Rin is a fancy term to describe a few basic feelings of love, love, sickness, infatuation, obsessive love, love addiction. It's this romantic love. And so when people are having a liran affair, they're feeling this romantic love feeling, and it really starts a growing romance. And that's why they want to leave their spouse and be with this person.

Morgan:

The betrayer believes he or she wants out of the marriage. So they think they want out of the marriage. The betrayer believes he or she is in love with the affair partner and is willing to sacrifice life with their spouse for the opportunity to be with the affair partner. And typically, this type of affair is a long-term relationship versus the one I stand where it's very temporary and very one night standish.

Brad:

Yeah, it's a long-term relationship that develops into romance develop.

Morgan:

And then frequently there's a pattern of betrayer swinging back and forth between their marriage and their affair partner. And when they are at home, like we talked about trying to do what's right, they're miserable and they feel like they'll never be happy. And when they're with their affair partner, they have this euphoria, this ecstatic euphoria, but they may be feeling so guilty that they can't stand it. So they move back home only to feel miserable and to realize once again that they can never be happy unless they go back to the affair partner. So it's this back and forth, back and forth dance. And then this dance of insanity can continue for years. So this back and forth can happen for a very long time. Versus the one night stand, maybe short betrayers often seem incapable of making a decision about what they're going to do, and they don't want to be in the marriage. Other factors may keep them from choosing to divorce, for example, feelings of guilt or failure may cause them to stay. There may also be strong feelings regarding what's best for the kids. So they may decide to stay for the children, but a lack of commitment to the marriage is a real problem. So

Brad:

Choosing to leave isn't the solution. But this kind of affair too, Morgan, I want to include this and this type of affair with limine affairs. The betrayers have most likely already made the decision to leave their marriage when people are experiencing kind of made up the mind, I think I'm done. I don't think I want to be here anymore. And so we'll see them come to counseling usually out of respect or something like that.

Morgan:

But at that point, most of the time they've decided that they're done. They already decided care for their spouse.

Brad:

They just want to end on good terms. And so that's usually why they come to

Morgan:

Counseling. But we've been able to help people break out of the li and affair and actually rekindle their relationship with their

Brad:

Spouse. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so they want to leave. They've already made the decision to leave. They believe they can't be happy unless they get to be with the one they love.

Unlike the one night stand, this kind of affair indicates a deeper problem in the marriage. The marital problem is not the cause of the fair necessarily, but there are defects in every marriage. And sometimes those defects definitely play a role in an affair. And so at the very least, they can serve as inhibitors to the betrayer wanting to work on the marriage. Well, you've got these flaws, you've got these things. Why do I want to stay with you? And part of that is limerence at play. And part of that's just the reality of that's what marriage is like. Everybody has issues.

Morgan:

And we talk about you put two flawed human beings who're not perfect, and you put 'em together and you think, oh, it's a perfect union, but there's no such thing. You've got two flawed human beings. You're going to have a relationship with flaws.

Brad:

So

Morgan:

It's

Brad:

Natural. Well, and let me say this, Morgan, because one of the things, I know people listening to us talking about this, if they're in this, they may think, well, holy crap, this is hopeless. They want to leave. They're in love. They no longer love me. They feel like our marriage has issues. They went out of their marriage. They've been bouncing back and forth for a long time. It's not hopeless. One of the key things of overcoming a lime Orrin affair is really the person experiencing limerence, knowing that it's RINs, just them knowing, okay, I'm experiencing, and here's the characteristics. These are the factors that go into that. And we've got a show on that that we've already done. But just knowing that many times, that causes people just to put on the brakes

Morgan:

And to understand what's going on with

Brad:

Them because they think they're in love. They think they found their soulmate, and many times they're grateful to know that, Hey, this is what they're experiencing. And so that's one of the key things. And the other key thing is when you do this, and we haven't discussed this yet, but you have to start doing last resort techniques. You have to start doing things as a spouse when they've decided they want to leave.

Morgan:

And that's something that you've really developed a lot. The last resort technique, when your spouse is trying to leave you when they're done, there are ways to actually save your relationship.

Brad:

And I'll just briefly go over that, and we're going to do this in a future show. Basically there's four things that you want to do, and these are one sided. But when you're trying to get someone back, they're leaving for very specific reasons. And so we're going to discuss those in a different show. We're not going to get into those today, but there's things that need to be done. And so it's not hopeless at the very least.

Morgan:

Yeah, definitely. It's not hopeless. We can definitely help. There are ways to rekindle the relationship. And today we're talking about the different types of affairs. There's 10 different types, but we are on the third, the sex addicts

Brad:

Affair, the sex addicts Affair. These affairs are committed by individuals. This could be male or female, to have an ongoing pattern of sexual betrayal such as frequenting, topless bars or adult bookstores, viewing pornography, compulsive masturbation, prostitution, repetitive encounters with sexual partners and other behaviors that are destructive to both the individual and to the marital relationship.

Morgan:

So this is kind of that stereotypical one that everyone thinks, oh, if they've made the mistake of having an affair, that they all kind of are lumped into this category. But it's not entirely true that everybody is,

Brad:

No, it's not a sex addict. Not everybody who has a one night stand is a sex addict or goes to topless bars. Whoever better be that goes to topless bars is not a sex addict. But here's the important thing with this. If you have, I would say a majority of these things that we just listed, a pattern of sexual betrayal, like topless bars, adult bookstores, viewing pornography, compulsive masturbation, prostitution, repetitive encounters with sexual partners, those can be evidence of a sex addict. And let me say this, I know we talked about one night stand a few minutes ago, when a sex addict has a one night stand. This is someone who seeks out the opportunity for sex. And so I had a guy one time I worked with, he would pick up women from bus stops on his car and he would have sex with 'em. And he did this 17 times. So he had 17 one night stands,

Morgan:

Oh my gosh, that he

Brad:

Could remember, that he could remember at this point. And the guy is a sex addict. Now those a little bit more than one night stands. And so if you've traveled for business and you've had one night stands, you may not be necessarily a sex addict. You probably have very bad boundaries, but it is worth exploring so that you can get the right treatment for it. Because one of the things in rebuilding your marriage back is the behavior has to stop. Trust has to be rebuilt. And each time that a one night stand reoccurs, you are demolishing any sort of progress that's been rebuilt.

Morgan:

And these people that are seeking out these sexual relationship, there's not even really a relationship. Sexual experiences. Sometimes they feel like they just can't find the fulfillment in their marriage.

Brad:

Yeah, yeah. It's

Morgan:

A deep void.

Brad:

Well, even though they're married, they haven't found complete fulfillment from their marriage. In fact, they're enslaved by desire to satisfy their longings. They're driven by obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. They're powerless over their extramarital attachments to these behaviors to people or objects like pornography. They're really powerless to this. These individuals look to extramarital attachments to meet the need for love and acceptance instead of allowing their mate to fulfill these needs.

Brad:

And

Brad:

So this is really important. What they have is they have a huge amount of toxic shame. They feel really unacceptable as a person. They feel unlovable. They feel shame is what gets them into sex addiction. And these individuals are looking for sex to meet the need for love and acceptance that they have. And unfortunately, it just creates more, and I'm going to get into this in a minute, but that shame that comes from being a sex addict just creates, in fact, more of a compulsive need for sex addiction.

Morgan:

This category is not about the marriage as much as it is about the addiction. Is that correct?

Brad:

Yeah. Yeah. Sex addicts don't typically have affairs because there's issues with the marriage. Now, they may blame the marriage when they get caught. Well, you did this to me one time, or that happened, or this happened. So that's my excuse for seeing topless bars and pornography and having a string of 17 women. They can use that as an excuse, but not that the marriage didn't have issues, but that's them trying to save face. Most likely, they would've pursued these same behaviors whether they were married or not, or if they were married to Miss America, they still would've pursued these kinds of things. And so this is key. The shame and fear associated with this type of behavior perpetuates the dual life of an addict propelling the destructive behaviors. It just creates more of this. And so they often feel hopeless. They feel trapped by these behaviors, and they're afraid to come clean because they don't want to lose their marriage or give up their addictive behavior. And so this type of betrayal, it's especially difficult for the spouse who's been betrayed because their suffering is not just from the betrayal, it's from their inability to understand their mate's behavior.

What the addict has done seems so foreign. The spouse cannot comprehend it. So finding out why is really important in this.

Morgan:

Yeah, that why is so important.

Brad:

Yeah. One of the things a sex addict could do is even have sex with someone of the same gender when they're not a homosexual, they could still have a sex with someone of the same gender, and that really makes it hard. And so figuring out why, what makes it hard to recover is not knowing why,

Morgan:

Because they really have a deep void that needs to be filled. It's

Brad:

A shame. Shame and the guilt. Yeah. There's so much shame there. I'm such a bad person and they're trying to remove that toxic shame. I'm such a bad person that they're looking for sex and acceptance. It's

Morgan:

Almost like sometimes self abuse, sometimes pursuing something that will

Brad:

Exactly. Yeah. I'm just going to go through these characteristics real quick. One of the things that can happen with this is when the betrayed spouse, they're in such a shock because it is outside the norms of healthy sexuality, obviously. And so they're so shocked about this

Brad:

At

Brad:

The magnitude of the compulsive behavior that makes it also difficult for a couple to recover.

But the characteristics of this is it's a habitual pattern of extreme behaviors that are either sexually related or they're relational. So that means somebody can have a series of flings that are emotional affairs, like through text messaging or emails or things like that, and not quite reach sex, but they may have phone sex or something like that. Typically, the betrayer wants to save the marriage, but they still have a compelling drive to look elsewhere to meet their needs. They want to save the marriage, but they still have this compelling need to be a sex addict and act out sexually. Often these behaviors began before the marriage, and this was really important. They stopped after they got married, and then they began again after the addict realized that being married couldn't meet the needs that they have the same way as acting out does

Brad:

The addictive

Brad:

Behaviors. And so that's really important. So they may stop for a little bit and then kind of go back to it after getting married. It is common for the betrayer to have made past efforts to stop the behavior and to have actually been successful for a season only to relapse after believing things were better.

Morgan:

They

Brad:

Kind of feel like to

Morgan:

Let their guard down,

Brad:

They feel like, well, I can stand over the edge of this cliff and look down. And this is important. And this is a huge part of why this sex addiction continues is betrayer has a deep sense of shame and guilt, and the behavior creates more shame and guilt, and they have tons of shame that leads them into this kind of lifestyle

Morgan:

Negative cycle.

Brad:

Yeah, just reinforces it. The sex addict needs to be an individual counseling for their addiction. Being remorseful, not cure a sex addict, you need to go to a therapist who specializes in this. Recovering from an affair is not possible until the betrayer gets the help they need for their addiction. I say this because unless they get the help they need, it will happen again and again until this is dealt with directly.

Morgan:

And what's really important is you really need to go to someone. You can't just say, oh, my spouse is a sex addict, but you're not the therapist. So go to a qualified person before you just make the assumption that they're an addict.

Brad:

Because a sex addiction diagnosis is a heavy diagnosis and you need to make sure that it's a legitimate diagnosis, something that you have to fill out. And yeah, that's legitimate. In Oklahoma, one out of six couples will do marriage counseling with a professional before divorce, which is really low. That is low. That's pretty bad. But it talked about the lime affair, and we're going to talk about the second type of the liran affair. This first type is more the classical type of liran affair where a person feels like they're madly in love with someone and they want to leave the marriage because they want to be with that person as their soulmate. But may happen is they may leave the marriage to be with that person and then come back. They may leave home to be with that person, and then when they're away, they feel guilty, so they'll come back home. And that's just a stance of insanity that

Morgan:

Happens. And then while they're at home, they feel the longing to be with their other

Brad:

Partner, the other person. And that puts you through the grinder when you go through that. Then there's a sex addicts

Morgan:

Affair, and there's very, a small percentage of people that actually have a sex addiction

Brad:

Affairs. Yeah, actually there's a very few number, but when they do, it's very clear because it's a lot of people,

Morgan:

A lot of people that they've had an affair with is what you're saying.

Brad:

Yeah. The shared interest affair, that's what we're going to talk about today, the emotional affair and the idealized love affair, which is the second type of limmer and affair. We're going to talk about Flanders men and women who are Flanders, who think it's pretty much normal or morally to have sex. They cross the line and they don't think they're cheating or they think it's okay to cheat

Morgan:

Sex outside of marriage, right?

Brad:

Yeah. It could be sex, it could be kissing other types of sex other than intercourse. Then there's a sexually abuse affair where someone's sexually abused their spouse. Mistakes set for an affair, the revenge affair. This is when someone's been betrayed and they don't have their spouse to help them try to heal, and they want to make them feel the same pain they have. So the revenge affair and then the exit affair. And so the shared interest affair, and let me say this before we get into this. Every affair, these are put in the categories. Some of this is information that I've created. Some of this is information from Rick Reynolds. He's a therapist down in Austin, and some of this is from Dave Carter who's also, and all three of us work with infidelity, and there's pretty much about 10 different types of affairs, and there could be more than that. But just for the sake of classification, they're put into 10 different types of affairs. So not every affair may clearly fit into one category that we're discussing in this series of types of affairs. So may not fit perfectly. There may be more than one category that your affair sits into. And so it's good

Morgan:

To know.

Brad:

It's very important to know that. So the shared interest affair in this situation, the betrayer, they'll be involved with a single person, and at the same time, they don't want to leave the marriage to the person having the affair. They look at their fair partner as a soulmate. And these affairs frequently spring from a relationship in which the two individuals share something in common, such as music, art, or other interests. Could be movies, it could be technology, it could be just something that they don't have in common with their spouse.

Brad:

And

Brad:

So they turn to the affair partner for understanding companionship and support. It is as if the betrayer develops two lives, they share one part of themselves with their mate, and then they reserve another aspect of life for their affair partner.

And pretty much every affair has, I would say most affairs have some element of this where they kind of have a duality. You kind have a secret fantasy life, but this is a little bit more developed in this type of affair. So let me repeat that last thought. The betrayer will develop two lives. They share one part of themselves with their mate, and then they reserve another aspect of life for their affair partner. Daily activities and information are divided into two realms that which will be shared with her spouse and that which will be shared with the affair partner. Usually this type of affair indicates that there are other deficits in the marriage.

Morgan:

There's just a lack of closeness, and somehow

Brad:

There could be a lack of closeness. There could be closeness, it could be lack of time together, that kind of thing. Lemme be clear here. Marital problems is no excuse for infidelity. Just because you have issues doesn't mean it's okay to go cheat.

And those are areas that need to be addressed in order to strengthen the marriage. So some of the common characteristics of this type of affair is the individuals want to stay married who have the affair. It's unusual for the affair partner to be referred to as a soulmate. It can't happen, and there may be a little bit of limerence in this type of affair as well. The betrayal's life is divided into two parts, the part shared with their spouse and the part they share with the affair partner. So in two different distinct needs are being met by these two different relationships. An important part of figuring out why and this kind of affair is asking, how are you different?

Morgan:

Interesting. Yeah,

Brad:

Because why is an affair? Because you're different in this type of relationship. You like how you feel in that. So asking how you're different would help understand a little bit more of the motivation, why someone had that affair and what they were drawn to. And so Morgan, the next part is the emotional affair.

Morgan:

This fifth type of affair is commonly referred to as an emotional affair. This is the fifth on our list, although some would not consider an emotional entanglement, an affair because it hasn't been consummated. And a lot of people don't see it.

Brad:

If you're not having sex, it's not an affair,

Morgan:

Which that's what they might think. But truly,

Brad:

That's what betrayers many times think.

Morgan:

Yeah, this type of relationship can be just as devastating and destructive as a sexual affair. Emotional affairs are not commonly discussed. And frequently their lack of sexual involvement, like we said, is used as to why it's not an affair. But technicalities in no way absolve the reality of the situation. So usually when a person has to put the word just in front of the word friend, there's a problem. The notion that a lack of sexual involvement somehow prevents this type of relational intimacy from being an affair. And it really is baffling. And anytime someone other than our mate is permitted to enter the most intimate areas of our life, we're just giving something that we have no right to give, and we have already given and committed our heart to another, to our spouse. And so sharing intimate details of your life with someone else other than your spouse, that's an affair. One good way to identify this type of affair is if your mate's best friend,

Brad:

Best friend,

Morgan:

Yes, has more information or insights about your mate's life than you do, does this friend know more about your marriage than you do if your mate is closer to a friend than to you? It is already an affair. And it may seem harmless because they've yet to cross the sexual physical line, but it is an affair nonetheless. And a lot of times these do lead to the physical affair. So the characteristics really are boundary issues. That's a factor. The betrayer is better friends with that individual than his or her spouse. The betrayer keeps secrets with his friend instead of with his or her spouse. The betrayer does not want to choose between the friend and the spouse, and the betrayer wants to stay married. Usually this one seems more sneaky to

Brad:

Me.

Morgan:

It seems a lot more sneaky. It kind of sneaks in.

Brad:

Yeah. People honestly have a hard time knowing if it's an affair.

Morgan:

The

Brad:

One who's been betrayed, they say, yes, it's an affair. The one who was involved in it many times, they don't feel like it was an affair because, oh, it's just my friend. I did talk about things, but they were telling me things. They were telling me about things going on with them. And so a little bit more, I want to go over a few more things that kind of help clarify this. It's an emotional affair if you're keeping the details of this relationship secret from your spouse, that's one way to note. It's an emotional fear. So you're keeping the details of this relationship secret from your spouse, you're saying, and doing things with the other person that you wouldn't do with your spouse present. So you're saying or doing things with this other person that you wouldn't do with your spouse present.

Morgan:

If your spouse wasn't there, you probably would change your tune.

Brad:

Maybe you wouldn't even go to that area. You're sharing things with the other person that you wouldn't share with your spouse, and you're making an effort to arrange to spend time with the other person. And this is important too. People who get involved in emotional affair typically weren't looking for an affair. They didn't intend to have an affair, and they didn't think they were vulnerable to having an affair. And so that's really important.

Morgan:

And the truth is, we're all vulnerable. We have to always keep our antenna up, our antennas up

Brad:

And about half of emotional affairs do develop into a physical relationship.

Morgan:

Interesting.

Brad:

And about 79% of people weren't seeking an affair. Were not seeking an affair. And that's information from dear peggy.com. He was an affair recovery expert as well. And so many times people just think it's harmless. But the fact is that these things do turn sexual. And many times the distance between no physical contact and kissing is a longer distance between kissing and physical intimacy.

Morgan:

Will you say that one more time?

Brad:

Yeah. That the distance between no physical contact and kissing is a much longer distance than when people start kissing. And the

Morgan:

Physical

Brad:

Intimacy that develops,

Morgan:

It's much easier to go from kissing to physical.

Brad:

It's just a natural progression of things. And so that's an emotional affair. The next type of affair, and this is the other type of a lime affair,

Okay, strongly lime idealized love affair. This is a love addiction that's characterized by repetitive pattern of moving from one relationship to the next, falling into a love that doesn't exist. Although this pattern has an addictive quality to it, these are not necessarily sexual relationships. They also do not fall under the category of people who have become emotionally involved in an inappropriate friendship. There is a compulsive pattern to their behavior. It is about the feeling of falling in love with that one right person. So this type of affair is about the feeling of falling in love with that one right person of

Morgan:

Butterflies, that you get that thing.

Brad:

And of course they can't find that one right person. So this never ending search for the one right person prevents full commitment to a marriage. And having discovered that their mate isn't the right person, Mr. Or Mrs. Wright, these people will compulsively pursue the search for their soulmate. And we've had this in our office where people will come in and want to leave their spouse because they think they found their soulmate, they think they found it, and they've met their spouse through an affair as well.

Brad:

And

Brad:

So it's kind of this progression like this, and it's really, they're looking for that falling in love, that perfect fairytale type relationship

Morgan:

That doesn't, that's not accurate, doesn't

Brad:

Exist

Morgan:

Realistic,

Brad:

And they're looking for the right person instead of trying to be the right person.

And so falling in love is not this falling in love thing that they're looking for is not love at all. When this occurs, it is not even about the other person. It's how it makes them feel about themselves. Anyone who has fallen in love will eventually fall out of love and then must choose to love because love grows in stages. You have the romantic love, then you experience disillusionment, and then you have mature love where you choose to love. So anybody in every relationship moves past romantic love, nature's way of helping us bond with each other, develop a relationship with each other, but it moves on to disillusionment, begin to see flaws and weaknesses. And then you have to choose to

Brad:

Love.

Brad:

And these people keep thinking, well, crap, I want this romantic love feeling. I like this being in love feeling. And they keep looking for that. And when it ends with one relationship, they go to the next for it. And so pretty much anyone who has fallen in love is going to fall out of love. And you have to choose to love

What real love is. True love is based on knowing the other person and letting that person know you. This is a healthy intimacy and not this false intimacy. The love addict has mistaken for love. They've clung to and obsessively pursued, and that's that part of limerence. So characteristics of this, it occurs in male and females, but it can happen more often with females. The betrayer will be ambivalent about their marriage. They also tend to overvalue the person they're infatuated with. They may think this person is the greatest thing ever. They're incapable of judging the negative characteristics of the affair partner. While they may see the defects, they won't give these defects any weight, whether they see them as unique or special. So even the negative flaws of this person they look at is unique or special.

Morgan:

And is that before they actually join in a relationship with that person and then see more clearly, or is it just like an infatuation that wears off over time? Is that

Brad:

It could be, yeah. Usually it wears off over time

Morgan:

And then they start to see those flaws maybe differently at that time when the infatuation wears

Brad:

Off. Well, yeah, they'll notice 'em as flaws then. But when they, they're involved in and this in love feeling, they don't even really consider, many times they don't even consider the weaknesses. And when they do, they might look at it as, oh, he only has a temper because he's just passionate about stuff. Yeah, he's a passionate, he gets so passionate, he punches holes in the wall. Gosh, I love somebody who's so passionate about

Brad:

Life.

Brad:

That's how they'll look at it. It could be something that silly so occurs more often with females. They tend to be ambivalent about their marriage. I love my spouse, but I'm not in love with my spouse.

We'll hear that, and that's a sign of this kind of affair or even any affair really. But they tend to be ambivalent. They've experienced this kind of relationship with someone else, and they want to try to recreate that with their spouse, and they may decide to leave them and they don't feel that emotional bond that's there. They also tend to overvalue the person they're infatuated with. We were talking about that a moment ago. They're really incapable of judging the negative characteristics of the affair partner. And that's because of nce. And we talked about that before in a previous show. The Thence is also known as love sickness, love addiction, infatuation, obsessive love, romantic love, and it really just clouds your judgment on how you see things. These defects may be seen, they don't really consider it. They may see 'em as unique or special, kind of what I was talking about with the anger. This may not be an actual relationship with a person they're infatuated with. It could be like an obsession that's not reciprocated

Morgan:

Interesting.

Brad:

So it could be somebody they work with.

Morgan:

It's like a challenge.

Brad:

It could be like a challenge, but that's also how ence works. It's when eye contact's made. It's when you find someone that you think is attractive or you think that's interested in you, and there's eye contact with them. Many times, that's kind of when Rin starts. We've talked about that progression.

Morgan:

It's fall. That's the fall

Brad:

Like

Morgan:

You talked about. Yeah.

Brad:

And so they may not even have a relationship with this person. And these betrayers will often frequently complain about the lack of romantic love in their relationship. They feel like they've married the wrong person,

Morgan:

The marital relationship. Yeah.

Brad:

They'll complain about the lack of love in their marital relationship, and they'll complain about, gosh, I think I married the wrong person here. And they'll experience obsessive thoughts about the romantic partner, this lime object. And that's really what happens is this person becomes objectified that they feel in love, they're in love with. They wouldn't say that, but that's typically how psychologists described this experience. This person becomes an object. They experience obsessive thoughts about this new romantic partner. They spend time, they spend as much as 80% of their time awake thinking about this person trying to determine how this other person feels about 'em. And the obsessive nature of this relationship creates unrealistic expectations of the love object. So this kind of relationship, but they're so obsessed with it that they create unrealistic expectations, interesting of this person that they're in love with. This person's got to be God or walk on water, or they have these really unhealthy, unrealistic views of who this person is.

Morgan:

And you had mentioned just a couple of seconds ago about most of the time they feel like, well, maybe they married the wrong person, but it seems like a lot of these affairs, they might say that, well, I just don't know if I married the right person. But I could imagine once you dig in and find out, well, why they had the affair, what the reasons are, how they view their relationship and love and that other person, that's when you can determine that it's this really, we shouldn't be pathologizing our spouse or trying to just based on one radio show trying

Brad:

To figure out, because these affairs, honestly, every affair has a lot of these characteristics,

The duality between the spouse and the affair partner, the feeling of love, feeling like you've made a mistake. There's a lot of commonality in a lot of these different types of affairs. But what we've done is we've really classified these to make it easier to understand what's happening in those affairs. One of the key things to understanding why is really asking that question, and we've been over this before, but it's worth repeating, how are you different in this affair? That's so important because a lot of this, as you can see from each one of these affairs, it goes from someone to talk to someone I have a shared interest in, and then someone who I think is this right person. Yeah. The soul need. It goes from these different experiences, and each person going through an affair has different

Brad:

Motivations.

Brad:

And so just to classify one, it's always this way. It's not always that way.

Brad:

There

Brad:

May be similarities, but these categories are helpful in just understanding where your spouse is at. And if you've had an affair, you may fit in more than one category. You may fit in two categories or three categories. In recovering from an affair, it really, it's important to disclose all secrets. And that's very hard for people to do because the person who had the affair has so much shame and embarrassment. They feel like talking about the affair only makes it worse for their spouse. But healing from an, it's important to be honest, transparent, and show your spouse that you're willing to do whatever it takes. And if it's difficult to talk about the affair, you need to talk about your fear with your spouse on why this is so difficult for you because your spouse thinks that you don't care about 'em or they think you're still involved in the affair. But if you talk about how this is difficult for you to talk about this, how you're afraid of making them hurt, how you're ashamed, don't want to relive this, how you want to put this behind you, the guilt is so strong that will help your spouse begin to heal as well.

Speaker 6:

But

Brad:

Your spouse is going to keep asking for answers and want to talk about it, talk about your fear, talk about how hard this is for you to talk about it. That's okay too.

Morgan:

It's a great place to go and

Brad:

Start. It's a great place to start.

Morgan:

And we've said in the past, the first 90 days are the hardest. It's, would you say two years to rebuild the

Brad:

Trust? Yeah. Typically it depends on how well couples manage that negative cycle if they get into. And that's what we try to help couples really with. And honestly, you don't see that too much in a fair recovery, especially some of the books or information online.

Morgan:

You don't see what too much.

Brad:

You don't see people really address the negative cycle, in my opinion. They give you instructions on how to talk about it, but they don't talk about the motivations behind each person, what they're needing. And so getting professional help dealing with the negative cycle, because ultimately honesty is important for building trust, but ultimately what helps you heal besides the honesty is the emotional connection with your spouse. And you've got to get out of the negative cycle because the negative cycle you're trying to heal with many times is the negative cycle you had before the affair.

Morgan:

And the negative cycle is that pattern of a

Brad:

Bit pattern of interacting,

Morgan:

Interaction, yeah,

Brad:

Yeah. Attacking each other of avoiding each other. So you got to deal with that.

Morgan:

Right. Do you want to recap what we talked about and then we'll go on to the last few?

Brad:

Yeah. There are 10 different types of affairs. I've identified some of these. Rick Reynolds from Austin, Texas has identified some of these as well, 10 different types of affairs. There is the one night stand, this occurs generally when someone has had too much to drink and being anonymous is involved, they want to stay in the marriage. It's not an ongoing relationship at times. It can morph into an ongoing relationship though. And let me pause and say this, Morgan, we're categorizing these affairs for the purpose of understanding them. Our listeners who have gone through an affair, their affair may contain more than one category. Kind of like I was saying a moment ago about the one night stand that can lead into a relationship. I've seen that in my office. It begins that way, but then a relationship starts so it becomes an emotional affair. Your affair, your experience may not fit nicely into only one category can be divided into two or three categories. And so this is just to help us understand things better. So there's the one night stand, we talked about that. And then there's the liran affair and liran affairs. This is more the classic liran affair. There's another liran affair that we talked about last week, but in this classic liran affair, this is when two people feel like they're in love and they feel powerless over these emotions of love. And limerence is that feeling, and we've spent time talking about this too.

It's that feeling of infatuation love, romantic love, obsessive love. When you're not around that person, you feel despair. You wonder, do they feel that way about me? So there's despair there. So they want to be with their affair partner. And then what can happen as well is there is feelings of guilt because you see what you're doing to your family, what you're doing to your spouse. And in fact, we had someone in our office this past week, very first session who came in with this, and this is kind of that classic liran affair. And so you see this, it can kind of grow in stages, so you don't always see at this level of maturity. This guy's been at, and let me say this,

Brad:

He

Brad:

Was already in that place of ambiguity after one month of experiencing this. So that liran feeling develops quickly and it causes doubt

Morgan:

Sometimes by locking eyes that someone could fall into this love sickness that's

Brad:

Infatuation. They think they either find that person attractive and they lock eyes with 'em. And then the other part of that is they feel like that person could be interested in them. Those are things that are at play

Morgan:

And it's the love object that we've talked about

Brad:

To Yeah, they're a love object,

Morgan:

The object that satisfies their imagination.

Brad:

And so when someone experiences a limmer and affair, they believe that they want out of the marriage. Sometimes it's a friendship that's developed into a romance. The betrayer is willing to sacrifice life as they know it, to have the opportunity to be with that affair partner, this dance of insanity, of going back and forth between the marriage and the affair partner, the guilt and the shame about leaving, and then the ecstasy when they're with the affair partner. That can continue for a long time. And so then the next type of affair that we discovered was a sex addicts affair. We discussed characteristics of sex addiction. What happens with that?

Morgan:

And there's a very small percentage of affairs that are actually, because we think that sex addiction is every affair. When we look at it on TV or something like that, people assume it must be just like 99% of the affairs are,

Brad:

And I'm not a sex addiction expert, but I would say very little has been sex addiction or very extreme cases of sex addiction.

In our practice, we've seen at least 200 couples, probably with an affair. I can easily think of three that had an extreme case of sex addiction. And then there's people involved in pornography, and that's not necessarily sex addiction, but I can think of three, maybe four out of 200. So it'ss not as common as the media portrays it, but it's also, it's something that's very real. Then we talked about the shared interest affair. This is when the beary is involved with a single person, but at the same time, they don't want to leave the marriage and then to the person having an affair, they view this person as a soulmate and the betrayer wants to stay married and their life is divided into two parts. The part shared with their spouse and the part that's shared with the fair partner, and they feel like two different sets of needs are met in those two different relationships. Sometimes these affairs frequently spring from a relationship where these two individuals share something in common, such as music, art, or another interest could be anything, computers, and they're just techies and they like discussing that kind of thing.

Morgan:

They connect on

Brad:

That level, they connect on that level, and so it's something that they don't share in common with their spouse. So they turn to the affair partner for understanding companionship and support. Then we talked about the emotional affair, and most affairs obviously have an element of emotional of what an emotional affair is. We talked about that boundary issues are a factor, how the betrayer can be better friends with this person than with their spouse. How the becher can keep secrets with this person instead of with their spouse, how the betrayer doesn't want to have to choose between their friend and their spouse, and ultimately the becherer does want to stay married.

Morgan:

Some for that one is if the person that you're striking up a friendship with knows more about your relationship and what's going on than your spouse does, then you're heading down that path.

Brad:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a good point. And this is the other limmer and affair that we talked about. I call this the I want to be in love affair. There's two different types. The one that we described earlier with the guilt and the ambiguity about staying and going where the guy after a month had already just been liran with someone was already kind of wanting out of the marriage. And then this is the other liran affair. I want to be in love affair, and this is kind of a love addiction that's characterized by repetition, repetitive pattern of moving from one relationship to the next, falling into a love that doesn't last, kind of keep looking for the perfect person, the perfect love. The perfect love experience is really what they're looking for. It's

Morgan:

An idealized, just an idealized version of a human being,

Brad:

And it occurs with men and women. I've seen it happen with both. They're all about falling in love more than anything else, and they've got to find that one right person. That's a search that never ends. They've bought into a lie. It's almost like a fairytale they've bought into.

Morgan:

Someday my prince or princess will come.

Brad:

Yeah,

Morgan:

We've talked about that.

Brad:

Then the a flander is affair, and the flander is someone who basically believe that cheating is justifiable. It's morally in some way, as long as it's not intercourse, it's okay. Honestly, you'll see this a lot. People who go to a lot of these conventions for work or trade shows, things like that. A lot of these conventions, there's a lot of people hooking up at those kinds of things, like a one night stand. They're anonymous, maybe not any alcohol involved, but they'll have these different things. And in a way, it's kind of like this, Hey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. It's this kind of flander attitude they may have and they can be influenced by a parent who was a cheater.

Morgan:

It's kind of a rite of passage. Yeah.

Brad:

I remember my dad telling me his dad was a cheater, and my dad telling me one time that having an affair was a rite of passage. And I remember thinking, dad, that's the dumbest thing anybody's ever told me that you've ever told me either. And that was he's older and he's from a different part of the country. That's just part of his generation or his mindset at the time.

And the people that are most the harm with this are people who, honestly, I think it's morally just people who have lack of integrity, the moral factor, people who they think it's okay for me to do it, but if you were to do that, me as a man, it's okay, but for you as a woman to do that, that's not acceptable. And so there's a double standard there, obviously. And then some cultures, I have an unsaid expectation that men will have women on the side, and some women are okay with that. And so that's a kind of flander affair, and we talked about that a little bit more detail last time. Then I want to get into the sexual abuse affair.

Morgan:

So basically this is the eighth type of affairs that we've identified, and this affair occurs when somebody has been raped or forced into sex by another individual, but the spouse of that person doesn't believe that he or she has been taken advantage of, so it's quite tricky. Maybe sometimes that person has experienced an emotional affair. Maybe they've had an emotional

Brad:

Affair. Yeah. Morgan, you some examples of this while we're talking about this so people can understand. Well, I had a situation one time where a woman was having an emotional affair

Brad:

With

Brad:

A guy, and when it turned sexual, she resisted it. She didn't want to go sexual, and the guy raped her, basically he raped her against her will. So the

Morgan:

Husband didn't believe her.

Brad:

Yeah. Had a very hard time believing that something like that happened. He's dealing with his own pain, doesn't trust her. He's been deceived enough. He's like, well, this is a pretty creative deception. So he had a hard time believing that. And then another time, there's a third time, I've seen this a few times. Another time this happened is where, and that's actually happened a couple of times where women have gotten raped and their husbands,

Morgan:

It's very hard for them to believe

Brad:

That. Yeah, it's very hard to believe it because of the boundaries they were crossing

Morgan:

And the trust that was violated

Brad:

Originally. Yeah, and I know this probably is a little controversial as talking about this, it's very hurtful for the person who's been involved. There's shame from being abused like that and then turning for support and not getting it. So both people are suffering and getting help with this type of affair, I would say is very vital.

Someone who's got experience in working with affairs and with couples, it's very, very, very important because it is just vital. Another time where I've seen this is a guy that knew a female that he worked with. She was sending him pictures. He didn't tell his wife anything about it. He didn't say stop it or anything. He kind of felt flattered getting these kind of lewd pictures. One day she comes on him sexually and in the middle of it, after about a minute into it, he says, I can't do this. I just can't do this. This isn't right.

Morgan:

And

Brad:

Tries to back away. Yeah. Tries to back away from it. And then she accuses him of raping her. This is a very, very, very dangerous thing. And it's obviously hard for both people involved. It's obviously hard for the one who's in the middle of it who experienced this. I usually say the injured spouse, the one who's been betrayed, both her kind of injured in the situation, but the one who wasn't involved, the one who feels like they've been cheated on, it's really hard for them. And consequently, that makes it much harder for the one who was involved in that kind of thing.

Morgan:

So the moral of the story is if someone is sending you text messages or always be above board and talk to your spouse about everything, being open and honest is so crucial because things like this happen.

Brad:

Well, and part of what makes it hard is that person was still involved in some gray, and that makes it hard for the one who's been betrayed to really go along with the story and believe everything. They were like, whatever. Come on,

Morgan:

You were already doing something.

Brad:

And then another time, a woman who was just drugged and she was taken advantage of. And so there's things like this that happen. There are people out there that do this kind of thing, unfortunately,

Morgan:

And they prey on people too.

Brad:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Morgan:

They're looking for you to let your guard down and to,

Brad:

Yeah. And it's men and women that do this. It's women as well. It's not just men.

Morgan:

Oh, right. Yeah.

Brad:

That prey.

Morgan:

Well, there's some characteristics here. Yeah, go ahead. A few of these are sexual contact was attempted or forced on the spouse. Kind of like in your examples, the spouse may have started to be a willing participant at first, but changed their mind at some time during sexual activity. Sometimes. Usually in the beginning I would say, well, but then again, it could be in the middle.

Brad:

And lemme say this, Morgan, the spouse, they might've been willing to participate in it first and then change their mind, or they could have been not involved and forced. They could have been passive, not involved at

Speaker 6:

All.

Brad:

And because this is rare, the spouse who wasn't involved, the spouse who feels like they've been betrayed, they typically don't believe their spouse was raped or taken advantage of, which only leads to more shame for the injured spouse,

Morgan:

For

Brad:

The involved spouse.

Morgan:

Absolutely. I mean, gosh, just imagine not being believed when you've been hurt from that. Oh, it's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah.

Brad:

Yeah. It's horrible. It's ridiculous pain.

Morgan:

So both people need healing big time. And this happens like you said, with both men and women. And Brad, do you want to go on to the revenge affair?

Brad:

Yeah, the revenge affair. This is a affair that occurs after a spouse has been betrayed. They feel like they're not healing fast enough or they feel like the betrayer isn't helping them heal or they're not getting it. They're not being honest, they're not. They're continuing the deception. They're still involved in their own affair in a way. They're kind of throwing up your hands saying, you know what?

Morgan:

If you're going to do that to me,

Brad:

I'm going to do it to you.

And so they want to make the spouse who's having the affair understand the pain that they're in and to wake 'em up sometimes and to wake 'em up. And typically this occurs after several months of trying. And I've seen this typically, it's kind of almost like a last ditch effort where they're trying to get a response out of their spouse on a matter to 'em. And so typically several months after trying to recover from the affair, they feel like they're not getting answers as to why it occurred or they're not getting that person there to help them. And they're like, you know what?

Morgan:

I'm lonely. I'm tired.

Brad:

Yeah, I'm going to do this on my own. I'm tired of hurting. And so they have kind of a revenge affair. And I've seen this happen a few times where people just get so exhausted, so burned out, and they feel like they're the only one trying to make it work, that they're like, I'm going to show you what it feels like. And then they go do it. That can be difficult if you don't have a therapist who's trained in an infidelity, that can be difficult. I remember the first time I saw that the first two times I saw that that was pretty difficult because you got someone who's burned out having their own affair. Then you've got someone who, who's been caught in an affair for some time not helping their spouse heal. And then all of a sudden they feel betrayed and they're like, Hey, you just hurt me. How come? But they have

Morgan:

No ground to stand on because they also have done it

Brad:

Well. But that's what the spouse who just had the revenge affair thinks. But now that person's been hurting as well because just now you abandoned me. You're not there for me anymore. And it gets complicated because both people are hurting, both feel abandoned. The spouse who just had the revenge affairs is saying, look, you've been abandon me all this time and now you're not helping me.

Morgan:

It's kind of like that whole adage of two wrongs, don't make a right because still pain begets pain and more

Brad:

Pain. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't help. And that's a tricky type of affair because when people get into that, both are hurting both one answers. And what's really hard about this is both of them are thinking of their own pain at the moment, and it's pretty deep. So both people are caught in their own pain and it's pretty hurtful.

Morgan:

It's really hard to step back and help your spouse when you feel so abandoned and hurt. Do you want to go to the next one or you want to say anything more about, I can talk about the next one.

Brad:

Yeah, go ahead and talk about the exit affair.

Morgan:

Okay. So the exit affair is an affair that occurs because the spouse doesn't care about the future of the marriage. So they're trying to do what they can to get out. They've reached a place where they simply don't care and really about being with their spouse. They get into an affair either as a way to end the relationship with their spouse or they're very susceptible to an affair because they're really investing so little time into the marriage. And when working with this type of affair, the betrayer may experience the feelings of ambiguity that we discussed earlier in the show. But what can be helpful in rebuilding the romantic love and influencing the betrayal to stay in the marriage is finding ways to do new, different and exciting activities together. But really another thing we've said in the show too is it's important not to try to go and do a romantic candlelight dinner because that person is really thinking

Brad:

Something like

Morgan:

New, different. They're thinking, gosh, I'm not in love with you. Why are we doing this? So one person you've talked about before, they've got tickets to the basketball game and they went and did that together because it's something that they knew that their spouse would really love and it would kind of wake them up.

Brad:

And it doesn't necessarily have to be things expensive, just new and different. It releases adrenaline in the brain. That helps. The other thing that helps though is honestly getting help. There's very little hope for this person when they're leaving. That's why they cheat. That's why they do this. It's almost kind of this rubber stamp, I'm done. This is me sticking the landing, so to speak.

Morgan:

And they're often very tired and withdrawn.

Brad:

So getting professional help that helps doing those exciting activities together helps. Also. The other thing is you have to deal with the negative cycles that come up because the negative cycle is what has led the person who's having an exit affair and to be burned out, to be vulnerable enough to have an affair. And let me say this, I would say most affairs that I've seen have had elements of an exit affair,

Morgan:

Tired. They're ready to leave, they're done.

Brad:

Most affairs that I've seen have had elements of an exit affair. Let me just describe briefly the psychology of a betrayer. Not every betrayer fits this category, and we'll spend more time talking about this on a future show. But briefly, the psychology of a betrayer that you get caught into a negative cycle. This person, because they're in a negative cycle, they then become resentful. They begin to not share things as much. They begin not to express their feelings and emotions and share things as much. And so that negative cycle creates that kind of climate for that. So this person, because there's a negative cycle there, it goes on long enough, they get to a place where they're not really talking as much. They're kind of more withdrawn. So they're not sharing as much. They're not opening up as much. They're not confiding as much. That right there makes them vulnerable. Vulnerable for an affair, obviously. And then they start feeling resentful, but they got hurt that are there. They feel resentful. They feel alone, they feel sad. And then they start kind of feeling numb, maybe a little indifferent. And then they start, this is the key thing. They start caring less about the marriage. And because they're caring less, they're extremely vulnerable to an affair, to someone new,

Morgan:

To

Brad:

Someone that's there

Morgan:

That

Brad:

They can open up to, that they can open up to share human. They have to talk about something. And that's why all these different things that we've seen, they really tie in well, I think to the exit affair. Not everybody that has it is really wanting to leave the marriage, but many times you'll see that where they're just kind of burned out. And that might be a better way to describe this as the burned out affair instead of the exit affair. But what they do is they care less about the marriage. They're vulnerable to someone else, vulnerable to an affair, and then they experience it. They experience that romantic love. They experience

Morgan:

That connection,

Brad:

That connection again, and

Morgan:

The attention from another person.

Brad:

And they feel good because they've been miserable and unhappy,

Morgan:

And they can feel like they can open up to that person in a way they couldn't with their spouse.

Brad:

And here's the tricky thing too. You'll have someone who before would never have an affair, but they get worn out so much that they're vulnerable to it and they're already thinking of it, and they'll justify it in their mind, well, we're not happy. We're going to divorce. I want a divorce. I want to leave.

Brad:

Yeah, we

Brad:

Splitting up

Brad:

Anyways.

Brad:

Yeah, we're splitting up anyways. And so then they's the way they justify it. But that's kind of a common thing that you see with a lot of affairs and the psychology of the betrayer. And so you could call the exit affair, probably the burned out affair.

Morgan:

Yeah, that makes sense. And if you'd like to read a little bit more about these affairs and just more information in general, you can check out our website,

Brad:

Go to our website. We have these on there,

Morgan:

Marriage solutions tulsa.com.

Brad:

Yeah, go to the blog on our website. Check that out. You'll get a lot of this good, helpful information,

Morgan:

And you can give us a call as well and can set an appointment with one of our therapists. 9 1 8 2 8 1 60 60.

Brad:

Yep. Our practice Marriage Solutions here in Tulsa, we have one of the only group practices just dedicated to marriage counseling. This is a think tank. This is an organization where we collaborate with each other. Everybody here has advanced training. We collaborate with each other.

Morgan:

We research and have created some

Brad:

Of the best methods for working with couples, and we're a place that's just marriages only and you want to go to a place like that because getting good help with a marriage is extremely difficult,

Morgan:

And we help couples and individuals with relationship issues. For example, if your spouse is leaving you and you'd like to stop your divorce, we can help you with that. We've helped people where they've already divorced each other and they've had second thoughts. We've helped them to remarry each other through couples counseling, and so there are a lot of different issues within the relationship that we can help you with. But yes, couples premarital, already married, couples experiencing difficulty and trauma, as well as if you just want a refresher on your relationship.

Brad:

Yeah, the couples that we've helped you have been divorced, they feel like your marriage has been restored,

Not just okay, they got back together, that kind of thing, but they feel like their marriage has been restored, and that's what's amazing. That's the most important part. Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed@healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast, it's for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See, until next time.

Ep 38: Healing Wounds Through Bonding Events

Transcript:

Morgan:

Hey, let's get away to a beautiful location for a destination retreat that will transform your relationship. This opportunity is unlike anything you've done before. Two days with Brad will give your relationship the boost it needs. Then enjoy the beautiful scenery. Go to healingbrokentrust.com for more information. Do it soon, because time is limited.

Brad:

How do I know you're going to do the same to me? You grew up with them, you created this life with them, they have this level of significance and attachment meaning to you. I don't have any of that with you. Granted, you feel like I'm your soul mate, but how do I know the tables aren't going to turn on me once you stop feeling that way?

Morgan:

Hey guys, welcome to the show. I'm Morgan Robinson here with Brad, my handsome husband.

Brad:

Hidey ho, everybody.

Morgan:

Hello, and before we get started we want to say, we have some amazing destination retreats available. Actually, we have filled our calendar in June and July for destination retreats, so we don't have anything available for June or July, but we do have a destination retreat available for August 30 and 31, that's a Wednesday and Thursday, so if you want to get away from your problems, where they are, no matter where you are, and come to a beautiful sunny destination, really get a new lease on life ...

Brad:

To maybe Cancun or Florida, to get away.

Morgan:

Yeah, then you can book a destination retreat over the phone, you can give us a call at 918-281-6060 and book that destination retreat today while it's still available, and you can check us out on the web at healingbrokentrust.com. We hope to see you soon.

Morgan:

There are some destination retreats available further out, but also we have retreats available in our Tulsa office, so you can come to Tulsa and do a retreat in the office, we just don't have any getaway retreats in June and July available at this point in time.

Morgan:

Let's go ahead and get started. We've had several people over the years, and we have lots of people who call us and talk with us and say "My spouse has left for the other person, or they want to leave," and we sometimes hear from that spouse who says, you know, "I want to leave, I'm thinking about leaving for the affair partner," and they say, "Well, I don't know if counseling will work," or they might be afraid that they won't ever be happy in their marriage or in their present relationship as they are or would be in the affair.

Morgan:

Today we're gonna talk about that, why not just leave for the affair partner? So Brad, do you want to talk a little bit about what the research says?

Brad:

Sure, yeah, sure. We can talk about the research, Morgan, talk about my experience in working with couples on this issue.

Morgan:

Absolutely.

Brad:

And Morgan, let me just briefly say this: this is a hard topic for me to talk about because I always try to be fair to everybody.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

And this one, it's hard to talk about because the reality of the situation is pretty bleak. The statistics are really stacked against people who go and try to be with the affair partner. I just don't want anybody to think I'm being unfair by describing my experience of working with couples with this and by delivering statistics, but this is something that we encounter a lot, and I've helped people work through.

Brad:

Our listeners, they only know us through this podcast, so we're really trying to be fair, and part of that fairness is kinda accurately reporting what we experience in doing this and what the research shows.

Morgan:

Exactly. Right.

Brad:

So, why not leave? Why stay, basically? And I think, like you said, there's research on this. One of the pieces of research shows that only a small number of people who left their spouse to go marry their affair partner are still married.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

There's only a small number of people that are still married after five years who started their marriage as an affair.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

Five years later, are still married.

Morgan:

And I was really surprised to hear that actually, a small percentage leaves. So, as someone who's experienced betrayal I think many believe that the betrayer will just leave for the affair partner, but you're saying that it's actually a small percentage that actually leave. Why is that?

Brad:

Why is it a small percentage that actually leave and not a larger percentage?

Morgan:

Yeah, yeah, like everybody.

Brad:

First of all, a lot of people know that an affair is impractical. They aren't really in love with the affair partner. Maybe there's certain things that they enjoy from the affair, but they're not truly in love with the affair partner. Not everybody feels like they're married to the wrong person, in that the affair partner's their soul mate. The people who tend to think that the affair partner's their soul mate and get really stuck on that limerence, they're the ones that are going to be thinking about leaving to go be with the affair partner.

Brad:

So, not every affair is that way, so not everybody who has an affair is just automatically thinking "Hey, I want to go be with this person." Some people know that they can see the reality of the situation, say this isn't gonna be pretty. They're able to see the pain of what the separation will bring, from their spouse. They're able to see ... and honestly, they're even able to see the pain of what it will be like to be with the affair partner.

Brad:

In the biggest reason why people don't leave, they also know the significance that their spouse has, and that their family has, on their lives. A lot of people see their spouse as somebody they had children with, that they became an adult with, that they grew up with.

Morgan:

They have history with.

Brad:

They have history with them.

Morgan:

Yeah.

Brad:

Their spouse is a good person, but there's also this inherent distrust towards somebody that they've had an affair with, so most people don't leave, because the affair partner's not really what they want, so they don't leave. But the people who do leave tend to be people that have gotten caught in limerence, which is something that we've talked about in a previous episode for you guys to listen to. One of the very first ones, we talk about limerence and how to fall out of love.

Morgan:

I think any other we'd term it is lovesickness, and that sort of thing. So, and that leads me to this other question. There's two basic trust issues. If they don't have one, then they have the other, and sometimes they have both, so you want to talk about what those are?

Brad:

Yeah. The two trust issues that people have when they've left their spouse and decided to marry or be with their affair partner, the first is ... and sometimes they have both, but if they didn't, if they don't have one they definitely got the other, and this is usually what brings them into marriage counseling. But the first is, you left your family, you left your children to be with me.

Morgan:

All of your friends who divided up.

Brad:

Yeah, your friends are divided up, you left ...

Morgan:

Sometimes your job, where you live-

Brad:

Your job, you left your family to be with me. It seems like your spouse is a nice person, it didn't seem like your marriage was that bad. How do I know you're not gonna do the same to me? You grew up with them. You created this life with them. They have this level of significance and attachment meaning to you. How do I know that ... I don't have any of that with you. I've only known you for a brief period, and our relationship has had to be secret the whole time. How do I know you're not gonna do that to me?

Brad:

I'm not as important to you, in attachment significance, as they are. Granted you feel like I'm your soul mate, but how do I know the tables aren't gonna turn on me once you stop feeling that way?

Morgan:

Or if I'm honest with you.

Brad:

Yeah, and Morgan, the other thing is, this really creates a lot of distress, too. Not a lot of people make a clean break, to leave their spouse and then go be with the affair partner. It's not like "Okay, you discovered the affair, now I'm leaving this weekend to go be with them." It's pretty messy, and so a lot of people go be with the affair partner, then come back home. They live this double life.

Brad:

Maybe the spouse doesn't know what's going on. The spouse rarely knows the full details. The affair partner often doesn't really know the full details. If they both talk, they're both gonna end up feeling betrayed, because they're gonna realize, hey, this person is lying to both of us. They're "betraying" both of us.

Brad:

People don't really ever make a clean getaway, clean break, and go with the affair partner, and so what happens is that's just gonna make it more difficult to have a healthy relationship.

Brad:

And then the other thing, Morgan, that makes these relationships hard, this is another issue that brings people in, usually one of them has cheated on the other. That's why they're coming to see me again.

Morgan:

Okay, so the first one is, how do I know that you're not going to do what you did to your spouse to me, and then the other is, they come in because of more betrayal, because they're kind of in a pattern and a habit of betraying and so they betray each other.

Brad:

Yeah, one of them has ended up betraying. That's kinda the grim reality of this is, there's kinda not just two but maybe three reasons to have ... you could add more, but maybe three basic that I see is, you betray them, you've now betrayed me with an affair, and then it took you forever to leave them to be with me. How do I know I'm really important to you? So you have to ask yourself, you gotta look at this realistically, because what people do is they look at the pleasure of this. "I found my soul mate, I feel so good. When I'm away from them, I feel so unhappy and I feel this despair, and I feel depressed when I'm not with them, but when I'm with them I feel great." People focus on that, but what they don't focus on is the faults of the affair partner, they're focused on the faults of their spouse to the hilt.

Morgan:

Right, of course.

Brad:

They see that, they feel the resentment towards their spouse, but the affair partner represents greener pastures, a new opportunity. If you're gonna be fair to yourself, something you need to do for yourself as you're listening to this, is you really need to look at this as objective as you really can, because usually what people do is they focus on the pleasure of being with that person but they don't focus on the pain that's really gonna be there.

Morgan:

Right, right. So then that's kinda the next questions, is the pain of staying and the pleasure of leaving, but they aren't realistic about the pain they'll experience in the new relationship. So what sort of pain would they experience if they leave for the affair partner?

Brad:

That's a good question, Morgan. There's a lot of pain there, and the pain of leaving to be with the affair partner is, rarely are they ever truly happy.

Morgan:

Right. There's always a level of mistrust.

Brad:

Yeah. I mean, granted, there's always some Hollywood couple that you could point to. Some exception. There's gonna be some exception to everything. There's gonna be somebody that lives to be 140 years old when everyone else is dying at 70.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

There's gonna be some exception somewhere, but are you that exception?

Morgan:

Right, and it's very rare.

Brad:

It's very unlikely that you're gonna be that exception, because what the research shows is that 80% of people that divorce during an affair, because of an affair, end up regretting it.

Morgan:

Right. And I think part of the reason for that is because they just don't know that person. They don't know their faults, they don't know what they look like in the morning for real, they don't know how they respond or react in different situations and scenarios because they've only seen one side of them.

Brad:

Yeah, well, and Morgan, here's something else. Is, there's a lot of people who, some of you who aren't, who've been betrayed, you might find this surprising, but there's a lot of people who have an affair and they actually fight a lot with the affair partner. It's not uncommon for people to really fight a lot with the affair partner. Talk about-

Morgan:

Pretty normal.

Brad:

Yeah, it's actually normal for them to do that, and that creates the mistrust, that creates reasons not to be with them. People don't really always think about that pain. I've had people who plan to leave, who left, and they're like "Yeah, we fight all the time." They're like "I'm not in limerence because we fight all the time," but they still feel like this is my soul mate, they really minimize the flaws, the negative characteristics that are there. They're not really looking at it objectively, and so that's something you have to ask yourself, is like, what kind of foundation are we creating here for ourselves? If this were a business deal and we were moving forward in business and this is how it started, would you even like this person down the road? Just add in the other normal family stuff.

Brad:

You have to ask yourself, are my kids gonna like this person? Because kids typically feel betrayed too, whenever a parent leaves. So a kid will say "Why are you leaving me and Mom, or leaving me and Dad, and my brothers and sisters to go be with them and raise their kids? Why are you gonna go sleep at their house and take care of them, and you're gonna leave me here?" Kids feel betrayed, and it's very hard to get over stuff like that.

Morgan:

Right. It's hard to build a healthy, happy relationship and marriage and family.

Brad:

In general.

Morgan:

Based on that.

Brad:

Yeah, in general, but when you don't have a good foundation it's a lot harder, and part of this foundation is, people who start out as an affair and then when they do marry, their marriages are twice as likely to divorce, and so it's really something to be mindful of and aware of.

Morgan:

And it's because of that negative cycle, it's because how can you have bonding events, how can you have kinda deep understanding of the person and open yourself up to that person if you just can't know for sure that they're gonna stay with you, and I can't imagine there's any amount of "Oh, don't worry. I'll stay with you, don't worry, I love you, don't worry." You can't really speak to that if the actions haven't followed, if the track record hasn't been solid, to say the least.

Brad:

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Morgan.

Morgan:

So let's talk about, what are some things they need to look at, realistically, if they're considering leaving. What should they focus on, what are some things that they should ask themselves, maybe-

Brad:

Good question. Well, I think you have to ... like I said earlier, usually people are focused on the pain of staying with their spouse, and they're focused on the pleasure of being with the affair partner. You need to switch that if you're gonna give yourself a fair chance. You need to think about the pleasure of staying with your spouse and the pain of being with the affair partner.

Brad:

One of the things that you also need to ask yourself is, right now we're in the beginning of this relationship. We're maybe a year in, two years in, we're six months in, we're a month in. You need to ask yourself, and we're fighting right now, we're not getting along right now, we're already talking about can we trust each other. This is the honeymoon of your relationship, so you need to really be fair to yourself and ask this kind of question. You need to think long-term perspective on this.

Brad:

You need to also kinda ask yourself, where am I really watering the grass right now? Because the grass is greener where you water it, so where am I watering the grass right now? Am I watering it with the affair partner and ignoring my spouse? Am I not giving us a fair chance? Am I in limerence, because limerence ends whenever you are actually with that other person. Adversity is what creates limerence, and so if you don't remember when limerence is, limerence is a feeling of lovesickness, romantic love, obsessive love, where you really are just infatuated and head over heels for this other person because you feel wanted by them, where you find them attractive, and what people do is they feel like this is their soul mate. They're willing to give up anything for it.

Brad:

You have to really be fair to yourself, and you're fair to yourself by asking these hard questions.

Morgan:

What will my relationship with this person look like a year from now, two years from now?

Brad:

Yes. And our kids, if they have kids. What's that gonna be like with my kids? Are my kids gonna hate my guts, are they gonna resent me? Because, and again I'm in a unique position with this because of what I do, children also feel betrayed. They often don't know about what happened, because people typically are pretty good at keeping things away from the kids, but if they see mom and dad are divorcing, and kids are smart, they're gonna figure out two plus two equals four. Somebody else was involved in this. They overhear things, kids are bright. Even young kids are gonna figure stuff out.

Brad:

A year later, you're getting married to someone else, they're gonna start feeling betrayed as well, and it's gonna fracture your relationship with them.

Morgan:

Right, and then they're gonna hate, or they'll potentially hate the affair partner, who then will have a terrible relationship with your kids, and they're gonna make it hard for you, probably, to even see your kids, because they have such a terrible relationship with your kids. Your kids make their life miserable, and then what's gonna happen? It's either gonna put a rift between you and your kids, or it's gonna put a rift between you and your new partner, so consider that. You may not see your kids ever again, they may not want to come around you because of the affair partner.

Brad:

Yeah, and you may put every one of them in weekly counseling.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

You really have to think about this. You have to be fair to yourself, ask these hard questions. One of the questions you have to ask yourself is, we've been at this for a while. We've been talking about leaving our spouses and being with each other, and it's been six months and they haven't left yet. It's been a year, they haven't left. It's been three years, they haven't left. It's been three and a half years, four years, they haven't left.

Morgan:

Do they really love me?

Brad:

Do they, yeah. Are they really gonna leave to be with me? Am I really gonna leave to be with them?

Morgan:

Right. And if I did, what's that gonna look like?

Brad:

Yeah, and that goes back to, at the end of the day the spouse is always more important than the affair partner. People may feel ... they may not feel that way when they're in limerence with somebody, they may not feel like my spouse is more important, but at the end of the day, that's the case.

Morgan:

Wouldn't you want the person that you're with, wouldn't you want their full heart? Wouldn't you want all of them and not just a part of them? You know, when you love someone and you care for them, wouldn't you want their full attention? Wouldn't you want all of their love, realistically, you know, their romantic love, but you're not getting that, and you won't ever get that, which is hard for people to grasp.

Morgan:

I think sometimes they think "Oh, surely once they break it off I'll get their full attention, their full love," but will you? Will you get it? I don't know, because like you're saying, they haven't broke off their marriage yet, why not? Because it's hard, sure, but they love their spouse. There's history there.

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

There was a commitment there that was pure and was not defiled from the beginning, so you deserve it. You deserve a relationship where they chose you, they made a definitive choice to be with you from the start, and they sought you out and you did it legitimately because you owe yourself that. You don't want to be the other person, because it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel like you're winning at life. It just feels terrible to be the other person, so I don't know. Just my thought.

Brad:

Yeah, those are good thoughts, Morgan. And so part of this is ... all of our decisions throughout life are really based on one thing. We're always moving away from pain and towards pleasure, so if we want to change our behavior, change our experience, we have to think more about the pain that we experience with certain behaviors, and the pleasure of not doing certain things. That's basically how we get out of this, and hopefully this has been worth your guys' time. This came up ... and usually all my podcasts are kinda things I'm dealing with throughout the week, or the last few weeks, so I just wanted to kinda talk about this.

Morgan:

So, just to kinda clarify a little piece of what you said too, we want to switch our thinking now. So all along, we've been thinking "oh, the pain of being with our spouse. Oh, the pleasure of being with this person who makes me feel good, maybe lifts my depression," but you need to make a conscious effort to switch that pain-pleasure dichotomy, I guess. So start associating the pain with the reality of leaving for that person. Will it hurt? Yes, it will hurt, and start really marinating on the pain of leaving for the affair partner and start considering the pleasure of healing this relationship with your spouse, so that is important to say.

Brad:

Yeah, Morgan, that's great. I just wanted to say one last thing.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

This is something that's another piece of research I came across since we recorded the limerence episode, and this is really important because when people experience limerence, they mistake that as this is a sign of who my soul mate's supposed to be.

Morgan:

Gotcha.

Brad:

You know, this is who God or the universe is telling me I need to be with. This is my soul mate, but what the research shows us is that when somebody begins a relationship with limerence, that infatuation, that lovesickness, that love addiction, that state we see them as perfect and just feel like when you're with them you feel great and when you're away you feel sad and despair ...

Morgan:

Depressed.

Brad:

Those relationships don't always end up in happy relationships, but when people marry somebody, that starts as a companionship-type relationship.

Morgan:

Gotcha.

Brad:

And so what happens is, you marry somebody as a companion, and you feel that companionship love, but then when you sometimes have an affair, what happens is you feel limerence.

Morgan:

For that other person.

Brad:

You feel stronger romantic feelings, then you begin to question your marriage, and so that's an additional piece of that limerence, and I wanted to mention before we go today.

Morgan:

Yeah, that's important. Yeah, so that's really really important. You just dropped a bomb in the middle of this ...

Brad:

And it's time to end. We gotta get going.

Morgan:

Dang it. So maybe we'll impact that a little bit more later. But thank you guys for listening, thank you for being with us today. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for making us the number one podcast for Fair Recovery on iTunes. We will talk to you next time.

Brad:

Thank you guys, bye bye.

Ep 46: When They Won't End The Affair

Ep 47: How To Encourage The Truth